Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Whilst not on the Mawson Trail, rode with Tim and Kate on the Coast to Vines Rail Trail, from Hallett Cove to Willunga. I felt quite exhausted, not sure why, but it impacted on my riding. Or so I thought, it was evident on the ride home that the constant head wind had made it quite a discouraging ride on the way down. Kate found it quite tough early on, for future reference we thought the trail was best ridden starting from an oval near Reynella, as the trail is too absent and heaps too much playing with cars between there and Hallett Cove. Signage is very poor, mostly non-existent, except for a collection of some cool four-post signs at McLaren Vale. Similar signage is presumably from there south to Willunga. My map showed the trail using the main road through McLaren Vale, however the four post sign showed a dedicated trail, but only some of that seemed to exist. The trail between McLaren Vale and Willunga has been named the Shiraz Trail, perhaps a rip off of the Riesling Trail. Would be good one day to ride north from Willunga to McLaren Vale, perhaps do some wine tasting along the way, not sure how compatible wine tasting is with cycling though.

Had lunch in McLaren Vale, at a bakery. There were lots of choices available, cafes and the like.

My favourite area to ride was east of Seaford (from South Road) to McLaren Vale. Was very country, lots of cuttings, hills and the like, but quite easy to ride. Couple of stretches of pine trees in cuttings - loved these. There were numerous such stretches along the trail, magical spots. Worst bit was near Seaford, strong smell of a rubbish dump, must be such a nice place to live (!), and open with head wind whilst going uphill. urrgk.

Later, we discovered that someone had done something funny with the car, but it's an incident we shall never speak of.

Stats:

Riding: 46 km - 30km there, 16km back to Noarlunga (+8km for me from home to Adel railway stn and back)

Riding Time: 3 hrs

Rest + Riding Time: 6 hrs

Average speed: 15.2 km/h

Max speed: 43.5 km/h

Temp: 21 degrees, head wind, sunny

March 29, I just discovered Quikmaps.com, this is so much better than tackling Google Maps API (it was beyond me). Had a bit of play around to see how it worked, doing a map for this day's cycling: